LONDON, Oct 3 The nuclear industry is gradually
recovering from its post-Fukushima slump, but excess capacity
keeps uranium prices at record lows, forcing mining companies to
mothball mines, slice costs and cut debt as they struggle to
survive.

In the wake of the March 2011 Fukushima disaster, Japan
closed its nuclear reactors, which accounted for some ten
percent of the more than 400 reactors operating globally.

Several other countries including Germany announced plans to
exit nuclear, and in the past three years several nuclear
reactors in the United States were closed as they could no
longer compete with cheap shale gas.

Five years later, only three of Japan's 42 reactors are back
in operation but new reactors brought online in China and other
countries have partly made up for the Japanese closures.

In the next few years, eight Westinghouse reactors
are expected to open in the United States and China, four Areva
reactors in Finland, France and China, and four
Kepco-built reactors in United Arab Emirates.

The World Nuclear Association (WNA) says it is feasible that
global nuclear electricity production, at around 2,441 terawatt
hours (TWh) in 2015, may return to 2011 levels this year and to
pre-Fukushima levels in two-three years. In 2010, the last full
year before Fukushima, nuclear generation came to 2,630 TWh.

Long-term perspectives have picked up too.

China plans to build at least 60 nuclear plants in the
coming decade, South Africa last month kicked off a major
nuclear tender, and Thursday's signature of the Hinkley Point
contract between French utility EDF and the UK
government opens the way for up to 12 new reactors in Britain.

As nuclear reactors need fuel, all this should be good news
for uranium miners, but the radioactive metal last week hit a
new decade low of $23.5 per pound.

Uranium, which before the 2008 financial crisis had briefly
peaked around $140 per pound in June 2007, traded around $70 per
pound just before the Fukushima disaster and has been on a
downward trend ever since.

"It has never been a worse time for uranium miners,
although globally the nuclear industry does well," Alexander
Molyneux, CEO of Australian uranium miner Paladin Energy
told Reuters in an interview.

BULGING INVENTORIES

Mining executives partly blame the slump on their customers'
wait-and-see attitude, as utilities believe that the uranium
market's over-capacity will persist for years and see no need to
rebuild their dwindling stockpiles.

Demand for uranium is determined by the number of nuclear
plants in operation worldwide, but supply and demand are
disjointed by huge stocks and uranium's long production cycle.

In coal, a bulky and inexpensive commodity, there is
relatively little inventory on the planet, as it typically takes
six to eight weeks between mining it and burning it.

Uranium however has to be mined, converted, enriched and
turned into fuel rods in an 18 to 24 month process. And as
security of supply is so important and uranium makes up just a
few percentage points of the cost of running nuclear reactor,
utilities tend to have 5-7 years' worth of inventory.

"At the moment, nobody feels the need to buy and the price
is lower every day. We are still waiting for the inflexion
point," Molyneux said.

In the five years before Fukushima, utilities worldwide
bought about 200 million pounds of uranium per year, he said.
Although Japan's consumption averaged only around 25 million
pounds per year, when it closed its reactors demand was cut far
further, falling by half. European and U.S. utilities saw that
the market was over-supplied and reduced inventories, buying
less.

Mining firm Energy Fuels estimates global uranium stocks
held by utilities, miners and governments are now at around 1
billion pounds. That is down from a peak around 2.5 billion
pounds in 1990, but still many years' worth of consumption.

Despite the plunge in uranium prices after the 2008
financial crisis and again after Fukushima, uranium production
has doubled from 80-90 million pounds in the mid-1990s to about
160 million pounds last year, according to Energy Fuels data.

Most of that new supply came from Kazakhstan, which over the
past decade has more than quintupled its output to become the
world's leading source of uranium with a 38 percent market share
in 2013, WNA data show.

DESPERATE TIMES

With so much new supply, and demand sliding, prices have
fallen to a level where most uranium miners operate at a loss.

He added that many legacy long-term supply contracts will
expire in 2017-18, which will force many mines to close or
throttle back even further than they already have.

Miners like Canada's Cameco, France's Areva and the
uranium arms of global mining companies have closed or
mothballed several mines and deferred new projects in order to
cut back supply.

Paladin - the world's second-largest independent pure-play
uranium miner after Cameco and the seventh or eighth-largest
globally - has production capacity of 8 million pounds of
yellowcake uranium but produced just 4.9 million pounds last
year at its Langer Heinrich mine in Namibia.

Molyneux said the firm will produce about 4 million pounds
this year and will cut output further to about 3.5 million
pounds next year if prices do not recover.

Paladin suspended production at its 2.3 million pounds per
year capacity Kayelekera mine in northern Malawi in 2014 but
maintains equipment so it can resume when prices recover.

Meanwhile it is trying to further reduce its debt, which
already fell from $1.2 billion five years ago to $362 million.

Paladin has agreed to sell 24 pct of Langer Heinrich to the
China National Nuclear Company and plans to use the expected
proceeds of 175 million dollars to further reduce debt.

Bigger peer Cameco in April suspended production at its
Rabbit Lake, Canada mine while also curtailing output across its
U.S. operations, saying market conditions could not support the
operating and capital costs needed to sustain production.

Cameco marketing head Tim Gabruch told the WNA conference
that "desperate times call for desperate measures".

Supply adjustments and producer discipline had not yet been
sufficient to counter the loss of demand, he said.

"As difficult as those decisions have been, we recognise
that those actions may not be enough."
(Reporting by Geert De Clercq; editing by Peter Graff)

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